A recent survey by the cybersecurity tool, Surfshark Antivirus, has found that there was a rise in cybersecurity cases in Kenya in the second week of December.
Surfshark said that using their antivirus, they found at least one threat every 50th time they scanned for threats to security.
“Kenya is the second country by threat rate in Africa since the start of the monitoring period which was a month to Black Friday up to mid-December,” they said.
As the festive season shopping is picking up, Surfshark reports a rise of 572 per cent in cyber threats in Kenya in mid-December.
“Kenya had a threat rate of 16 threats per 100 scan cycle,” they said.
The most common threat types identified and flagged during Surfsharks’ Antivirus scans are riskware, heuristic, and trojan.
Riskware is a program made without malicious intent but has security vulnerabilities that give it the potential to become malware.
Malware is any software, product, or program created or installed onto a computer to cause harm including viruses, trojans, worms, spyware, adware, bots, and more.
“Hackers use malware to corrupt or delete files, steal money and personal data, copy passwords, or take control of specific programs,” they said.
The most common ways for malware to be installed are phishing emails, corrupt attachments, suspicious downloads, unfamiliar links, and malicious websites.
In the past two months, Surfshark said that the most common threats in Kenya have been riskware and SPR.
Nedas Kazlauskas, Antivirus Product Owner at Surfshark said that the holiday shopping season leading up to Christmas is not only beneficial for the retailers but cybercriminals too.
“People searching for gifts and deals online during the period of huge discounts are more likely to click on suspicious links, download malicious files, and infect their devices," he said.
Kenya experienced a 572% threat rate increase during the second week of December.
The five countries that suffered the highest threat rate spikes during this time, were Italy, Indonesia, U.A.E. and Romania.
Globally, Europe is the most affected region by cyber threats.